Do I have options????!!!!

[bknthesdle]

Don't know if y'all remember me or not but I got my first three baby goats early this spring. 1 was dam raised and I got her at weaning time. The other 2 I got as bottle babies and raised them myself. All three have been together since they came home.

It wasnt until after I got my goats that I did research and learned about clean herds and diseases in goats. I decided I was going to make sure my new herd was clean.

It's the 6th month mark for the older of the three (Prudence). So I had blood & fecal drawn for testing for Johnes, CAE & CL.

The test results for one of the tests came back positive for Johnes. I have scheduled an appt to take all three in for euthanasia on Friday but I am wondering if there is ANY possibility the other two wouldn't be positive. The vet seems to think they will be positive. The other 2 aren't six months yet and the test for Johnes with the vet is expensive. All three have been in the same pen. The pen is appx 15" x 30". The vet thinks there isn't a way the other 2 could be clean.

Can anyone give me any advice or experience/wisdom? I really don't want to lose my 2 younger babies.

Ps. If it matters the older one came from a different place than my younger 2.

[bknthesdle]

Please? Anyone? I have been in tears all afternoon. It is killing me to go outside and hear them call for me and know what is due to happen Friday. They seem so healthy & happy!!!

[Minelson]

I'm so sorry.. I don't have enough experience with diseases to give you advice on that. But I do have way too much experience with loss. And I am sending you tons hugs and vibes to help you get through this

[Oat Bucket Farm]

I don't know...I wish I did.

[Alice In TX/MO]

Oh my gosh. I am SO sorry. I don't know enough about Johnes to tell you anything helpful.

Huggs,
Alice

[Manchamom]

If I had the money, I would give copper and retest in a couple months. They are really too young to be showing Johnnes yet. This usually doesn't show until an animal is at least a year old.
The cattle people have discovered that being copper deficient can cause a false possitive on the Johnnes testing.

[ozark_jewels]

I am sorry.
I would also be of the opinion that IF one is positive, its highly likely the others will be as well. And six months is commonly considered to be too young to accurately test for Johnnes as kids and calves tend to not show up as positive that young. So it may be they are just not showing yet. I didn't find anywhere that said false positives can come from being too young, but maybe thats possible too.

BUT! There are false positives!! I would never put an animal down on one test result. Test again.
Better yet, have the fecal test run on her rather than the blood test. It takes longer but is much more accurate from what they tell me. If I was in doubt, that is what I'd do.

Also, be sure the test is run by a reliable lab. Not sure if there are "more and less reliable" Johnnes labs, but there are for CL and CAE.

[mpete]

Have a second test done by another lab. Don't rush to decisions yet. A friend had a fecal done once & it came back pos. for johnes, she tested again and it ended up being a different issue...
And remember, just because there has been an exposure doesn't mean there will be an infection....
I haven't had much experience with this, hopefully this site will help http://www.johnes.org/goats/faqs.html

[PNP Katahdins]

I thought you were going to say they were positive for CL or CAE. Johne's was a surprise.

I have sheep, not goats, but they get Johne's also. Our neighbors had a suspect ewe but the vet (a small ruminant specialist, sheep and goats) said it was really hard to diagnose, that the tests aren't terribly accurate. The ewe was always negative but they ended up culling her to be safe since something was definitely wrong with her.

Maybe you have already seen this: http://www.goatworld.com/articles/johnes/

Also http://www.johnes.org/goats/diagnosis.html which says:

"When and what animals to test? Test adult animals. Due to the biology of MAP infection, only adult animals produce the targets needed by diagnostic tests. That is, calves, kids, lambs etc. are infected while very young but they do not shed the organism with any frequency (so the organism detection assays will be negative) nor do they produce antibody (so the blood/milk tests will be negative). That is why it is recommended that diagnostic tests be used only for goats at least 18 months old." (Last emphasis mine).

I am sorry you are having problems with your first goats, but you are learning a lot in a short time. Personally, I would cancel the euthanasia appointment for now.

Peg

[mygoat]

I'd wait until all are 6 months old, then do a pooled fecal PCR test. I believe it's 25.00 but you could do all your kids at once. (they can do up to 5 samples per pooled sample... if a pooled sample comes back positive, they can run individual retests on the rest of the individual samples in the pooled sample, to see who the culprit is). This method is cheaper than the blood tests if you're doing multiples of 5 animals, at 5.00 each!

Was the test you did the fecal sample for Johne's, or blood? Where? I would send samples to WADDL, which are a trusted name in animal disease testing. Fecal sampling is very accurate... but I would get ahold of a Dr. at Johnes.org and ask their opinion. Also be sure to explore the Johnes.org site extensively - it's very informational and great information to have at that!

I have heard of a 6 month old testing positive. In the case, a person was looking to ship a buckling in from Tx to OH, a pygmy buckling. The buckling was tested for CL, CAE, Johnes. Came back + for Johnes. Prospective buyer thought fluke, paid to have it's dam tested who was over 2 yrs and she tested positive. Thank goodness they tested for Johnes!

Johnes is mainly spread fecal oral, from adults with feces on their udder to nursing kids, OR directly through their milk supply - Johnes CAN shed into milk/colostrum from positive doe. IMO, a buck/buckling with Johnes wouldn't be TERRIBLE because he could be kept away from where kids are raised, and therefore transmission would be difficult if not impossible (an adult goat or even an older kid would have to eat a LOT of the bacteria to become infected, but babies are succeptible to disease). A doe, however, would be shedding it into an area where newborn kids could be exposed/raised, and therefore be much more troublesome for disease prevention/elimination.

[andabigmac]

My goat, Pickles tested positive for Johnes this summer. We did the fecal check and she was negative so we redid the blood test and she has a clean bill of health. She also tested positive for tb and we were visited by the federal vet for that. He was a nice guy. He told me that 1 in 6 Johnes is a false positive. Most tb is avian (as it was in Pickles' case so no big deal) I tested 6 goats and 1 came back positive. Go figure. He also said not to test does that have kidded in the past 3 months or young goats under a year old because their immune systems are usually compromised.

If they are your only goats then I would hold off on the euthanasia and retest at a year. Don't bring any more goats in until you know for sure. They're probably fine.

IF she actually does have Johnes she may not be shedding the cells fecally yet and the other two may be okay. Its a crud shoot though.

I personally would pay for the fecal test rather than euthanize.

I'm so sorry you're going through this. I know how upset and scared I was waiting for results. I'm glad I retested though. Pickles was worth it.

[Creamers]

Johnes

RETEST - don't euth yet. . . I cannot tell you how many false positives you will see with
Johnes testing, which is why I do not TEST for it -

My vet said in all his years of practice as almost an exclusive large animal vet, he'd never seen a case of Johnes in a goat or goat herd.

[Ranger]

What everyone else said!! Do yourself a huge favor and retest later. If you go ahead and put the first one down without it you will always question yourself over the whole thing. Johnes is not a very common ailment, thank goodness, and I would personally want a second test to be sure.

[andabigmac]

The federal vet also told me that they make a big deal out of Johnes because in the dairy industry it causes huge losses. BUT its not because of the disease itself, its because a large dairy does 600 cows, for instance, and 1 in 6 gets a false positive they automatically cull the 100. If a licensed dairy shows they have a Johnes positive cow a 90 day quarantine is put on the dairy. No animals can come in or out. For a large dairy its just easier to cull than deal with it. So it is a devastating disease for them. If the cow actually is positive its better for them to cull than to risk the other cows on the dairy. Most of those cows have a false positive but no one waits 90 days because its not good business. Because of the quarantine you're not allowed to go in and save them either. It is really rare in goats and if goats do get it they were probably housed with cows.

I can give you the USDA vets name and number if you want. He was such a nice guy and answered a million questions for me. He's based here in Utah but he can either hook you up with your local USDA vet or answer your questions. He'll tell you to retest though unless you can't for business reasons. I hope this helps.

[HappyFarmer]

1 negative blood test OR fecal test does not make the goat negative.

Blood tests may be false negative or false positive.

Fecal tests are used to confirm a positive blood test, HOWEVER a negative fecal test does not clear the goat, because the goat has to be shedding for the fecal to be accurate. There are cycles for the shedding in the feces from what I understand.

3 negative blood tests in 1.5 years is considered "clean" on the day of the last test.

A positive on a fecal is a positive.

Hope that helps.

HF

[bknthesdle]

I don't have an option to wait a year or longer. I live in ND and only have 1 barn and we raise cattle for a living. My goats would need the barn as soon as the snow flies and my husband won't let us chance the cattle over a couple of goats.

I am going to call the vet back today and find out how they tested (blood or fecal). He mentioned something yesterday about "high levels" but I was so upset I didn't ask him what he meant.

Eta: suffice it to say, remembering where she came from, and having spoken to the lady after I bought Prudence, it wouldn't surprise me if she was positive. She did not worm, or give shots or give minerals or baking soda or copper bolus. When I told her I was doing all this for my goats, she thought I was spoiling them. Her goats ran with sheep and lived on hay alone.

I just hate that my other two, who I bottle raised, came from a lady trying to maintain a clean herd. So they are given a death sentence because I didn't know enough to keep them separate.

[andabigmac]

Goats are surprisingly tough. I live in the high desert of Utah and it gets 25 below with the wind chill and some of mine live in hoop houses with deep straw bedding and they do fine. Can you build them something like that with a separate pen away from everything else until you can test again?

The 90 day quarantine is for retesting blood, which is cheaper than the fecal test. The fecal can be tested right now. Your vet probably did blood tests. It takes about a week for the fecal results to come back. You just catch a urine cups worth of poop and take it to your vet. If the fecal is negative they do one more blood test. If that one is negative then you are in the clear. I had Pickles' testing all completed in less than a month. You don't have to wait a year. You just get more accurate results if they're a year old. There's less chance of a false positive. Pickles had just kidded 3 weeks prior to the testing. Her immune system was crazy at that point. It had been a crazy wet spring. Its amazing what will set off a false positive.

[Creamers]

Almost certainly he would have done a blood test - I would get a fecal -

[HappyFarmer]

I recommend anyone learning about diseases to do their own homework. I've highlighted some very important information below.

I repeat, 1 negative test DOES NOT clear your herd. Also, a fecal can take several weeks to months for the final results, they have to grow the organizm if it is present. One of my vets pulled fecals & had them tested, because they were negative it took like 6 weeks before they's declare it was negative.

HF

http://www.johnes.org/handouts/files..._diagnosis.pdf



What’s confirmatory?
Fecal culture often is called a confirmatory test. Many peole
misunderstand what this means. If an ELISA-positive
ow also tests fecal culture-positive, you are certain the cow
has Johne’s disease: the diagnosis by ELISA was confirmed
y culture.
However, the information in the pie chart also illustrates an
mportant lesson. If a fecal culture done on an ELISA-positive
ows is negative, it does NOT necessarily mean the cow does
NOT have Johne’s. It likely means either that the cow was
not shedding the organism that day or that the 3-gram samle
collected for testing from the pounds of manure produced
hat day did not happen to contain it. On these 87 diagnosble
cases of Johne’s disease, the culture was false-negative
or 14 (16.1 percent) of the infected cows.
What is the best test for your situation? That’s where we’ll
tart in the next installment.

[mygoat]

The PCR test is pretty quick - tests for Johne's DNA, so is pretty indicative. The fecal culture does take a while, though.

Of course, there is issues of wether or not the goat is shedding the disease at the time of blood/fecal testing. The blood test, from what I understand, is pretty accurate - but it will depend on wether or not the animal is shedding the bacterium at the time of test.

A hoop house (cattle panel frame bent into a dome, covered by a tarp)
should be more than adequate during the winter with bedding and if thier stomachs are full with hay (rumination = heat). Another thing that works great for temporary housing are truck bed caps - just take off the big window in the back of the thing, put it up on cinder blocks, and it makes a great house for 2-3 goats that get along well.